Educational Science

'Ring of fire' solar eclipse 2023: How to watch in-person (and virtually)

A ring of fire, or annular solar eclipse, will be visible from eight US states on Oct. 14, 2023 — the first time such a celestial view will be available in North America. During the event, sky-watchers across North, Central and South America will see a partial solar eclipse lasting...

15 dazzling images of the sun

The sun's intense brightness makes it unsafe for us to get a detailed view of it by traditional means. So, for over 200 years, humans have relied on different modes of photography to safely glimpse the nuances of our star. Now, a range of telescopes and imagers capture the details,...

What it is: The sun's outer atmosphere, as captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on Solar Orbiter, a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft developed in collaboration with NASA. Where it was taken: Halfway to the sun Why it's so special: As this video shows, Solar Orbiter captured part of...

Sunspot numbers hit 20-year high, indicating the sun is fast approaching its explosive peak

The sun is partying like it's 2002. The number of observed sunspots on our home star last month was the highest for almost 21 years. It's one of the clearest signs yet we are fast approaching the sun's chaotic peak, known as solar maximum — and that it will be...

'Ghost' particles from the sun could lead us straight to an invisible trove of dark matter

Elusive dark matter particles may lurk deep within the heart of the sun, and researchers have discovered that we can use a detector buried in the Antarctic ice sheet to find them. Dark matter is the inescapable conclusion from decades of cosmological observations. Everything from the rotation speed of stars...

Earth is about to reach its farthest point from the sun. So why is it so hot?

Temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere might be high, but on July 6, our planet will be at its farthest point from the sun this year. It's an annual occasion called aphelion, a term that comes from the Greek words apo (away) and helios (sun), according to Almanac. If it seems...

Dazzling 'shooting stars' discovered in the sun's atmosphere. What are they really?

In a startling case of star-ception, our sun, which is a star, appears to have its own shooting stars streaking through its white-hot atmosphere. Technically, these solar shooting stars aren't stars at all — they're fireballs created by a phenomenon known as coronal rain. During this process, hot plasma cools...

Watch: NASA spacecraft flies through a violent solar explosion for 1st time ever — and survives unscathed

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has become the first spacecraft to fly through a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the sun, and it captured the whole event on camera. The stunning video shows the spacecraft passing right through the massive solar eruption on Sept. 5, 2022. The probe soared through the...

Rising and setting 'Omega sun' melts into a 'lava-like blob' in trippy mirage photos

Photographers in the Mediterranean recently captured stunning images of the sun appearing to melt toward the horizon as it set one day and then rose again the next day, creating trippy lava-like blobs in the sky. On both occasions, an enormous sunspot was also clearly visible on the warped sun's...

'Cannibal' coronal mass ejection that devoured 'dark eruption' from sun will smash into Earth today (July 18)

A cannibal coronal mass ejection (CME) birthed from multiple solar storms, including a surprise dark eruption, is currently on a collision course with Earth and could trigger a weak geomagnetic storm on our planet when it hits on Tuesday (July 18). CMEs are large, fast-moving clouds of magnetized plasma and...